Hydratight Awarded International Title at NOF Energy Awards

Specialist engineering services company Hydratight has capped a year of extraordinary achievement by taking a major title at this year's NOF Energy Awards.

Hydratight, British-based but operating all over the world, won the prestigious International Business of the Year title at the major industry event hosted by NOF Energy, the leading UK business development organisation for the oil, gas and energy industries.

The December 10 event, at Sedgefield, Co Durham, was attended by hundreds of leading industry figures from the UK and international energy and commerce sectors. The awards recognise national and international achievement in the energy industries and honour the British companies proving themselves "best in class" both in the UK and around the world.

Despite world recession, Hydratight showed significant gains and won major contracts in the past year.

"Hydratight was chosen for the award based on its substantial and sustained increases in export turnover and international market penetration," said George Rafferty, chief executive of NOF Energy.

The judges said the company, which provides world-leading bolting and machining products and services from four manufacturing centres and 26 international operations centres, is "a real success story of the UK supply chain, which has massively expanded its global reach. It is truly an international operation that the UK can be very proud of."

"We are delighted to win," said Hydratight's commercial director, Wayne Dennis. "It has been a great year for us both in the UK and internationally: we export our specialist expertise, products and services all over the world and this award demonstrates how companies like ours are helping to overcome the depression and gloom of the economic downturn."

The honour followed a year of advances on several fronts: new products, world firsts and technological advances within the company's joint integrity portfolio are helping customers worldwide to achieve secure, leak-free performance in critical, high-pressure connections on oil platforms, refineries, power stations and pipelines sub sea.

Hydratight has developed a reputation as a world-class provider of engineering services and training for technicians in energy, nuclear and aerospace industries.

"We have been able to offer complete, bespoke solutions to some amazingly intricate engineering projects over the past 18 months," said Wayne Dennis. "It is very gratifying to receive this recognition of our success."

Editor's note:
Hydratight's technicians have been involved in a broad range of projects in 2009:

• At the start of the year, Hydratight took on one of its toughest projects - the repair of a 30in, 210bar, pipeline damaged by an anchor, 200 metres under the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. The combination of the water's depth and the diameter of the pipe made this project unique and meant the repair, to insert a new section of pipeline sealed with a Morgrip connector at each joint, had to be completed using entirely remote intervention.

• But the company's projects aren't all on an epic scale: one of most impressive new products is a hand-operated flange refacing tool that can be used to repair a corroded, leaking flange up to 4in in diameter without the need for a power source. The device is light enough to be carried and operated by one person, meaning it can be used almost anywhere from the topmost pipe connection in a refinery cracking tower to a remote desert pipeline.